Two sticks and a stone

We are hardly out of the killing fields.
We were a frantic hop from the jaw
of a fasting world rich in species
bathed in the soups of each other.
The theory holds we built cities
out of backbones, myths of militaries,
sensations from the starving times.
And all the colors draw from us
their qualities, who draw them up
into gloomy canvases we civilize
(we are all cartographers of conflict
weary in the pitch) into politics,
though bouquets of species haunt us still,
laughing and barking at our attempts
to outdo beasts who shirked their miseries
long ago when we were but barely toddling.